A Party Weekend!

Looks like we've outdone ourselves! On Friday, I took the kids up to Tim & Jerzy's to stay for the weekend while Mom and Dad partied with the Bachelor and Bachelorette. Lynnell is getting married on September 15 and she asked me to be the Matron of Honor. Quite an honor!! We started the day with a pedicure, then went to the Heidel House in Green Lake. I HIGHLY recommend the Escapade Cruise-only $12 per person for a one hour tour. There is one of three restaurants that is reasonable and casual and has outdoor seating. Makes for a fun day away.

I've just discovered that I can upload only one photo per log in, so we'll keep that to a minimum this time!

After our cruise, we went back to Brian & Lynnell's for pizza(and cake to celebrate Lynnell's upcoming birthday). After that, the 10 of us boarded the bus to Appleton for some night life which lasted until about 2:45 am! I'm getting too old for this! We had a super fun time and if Lynnell does as well as being a bride as she did a Bachelorette, she will do just FINE!

It made for a short rest time, as my internals had a little something they weren't quite happy with me about.

So a little removal process, another wink of sleep, and by 9:00, we were getting ready to head back to Princeton.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (or the campground)--Christian had a surprise waiting for mommy. "Look, MOM-no training wheels!" It was a goal he set to be riding before he went back to school and bygum, he did it! Special thanks to Tim and Jerzy for their patience and ability to connect with a 5 year old busy body boy!

I picked up the kids and headed for home, just in time to whip on a change of clothes and pick up 5 of Mallory's friends for her 8th Birthday party at Build a Bear in West Towne Mall. We hit Dip-N-Dots for a treat instead of a cake, then found our way back home to crash in luxury in our own beds.

Hard to believe school is starting tomorrow already. Christian will be starting Kindergarten with Mrs. McKenney (the pastor's wife) and Mallory startes THIRD grade with Mrs. Ulrich. Mal had a fun day today shopping for her birthday present with Grandma Lala. Christian and I had a fun day with a surprise visit from Jonathon ("little" Jonathon who I used to babysit for) and Hannah. I am just consistently amazed by these "children" and their always making time to keep in touch. Jonathon will be starting his Junior year at University of Minnesota and recently got engaged to Chelse (I hope I spelled that right!?) Hannah is keeping busy with club soccer, Managing boy's soccer, working a real job, and babysitting!

And ya know, I better get to sleep, since school has a tricky way of bringing a discipline of schedule to an entire household!

Mallards, Petenwell, and Alex, OH MY!

I've tried updated this blog from my laptop about 50 times now, no joke. It is like a bad case of the movie Groundhogs Day. Usda. Well I've gotten this far, we'll see how far we get! July was filled as I'm sure you can imagine. Heather, who had been watching the kids, started looking ahead at the beginning of summer. She realized that come fall, she would need to find something different, since the kids would both be in school full time. She put her feelers out and found something right away. So we decided to make it through the summer between sitters. Between Kelly, Hannah, my mom, Dan's mom, and us parents, we have had quite the schedule from one day until the next!

We haven't been playing volleyball this summer, instead we've been going fishing, and just spending time just the two of us most Wednesdays. Jenny Hendricks has still been coming over on Wed. nights to watch the kiddels.

In late July, Alex came for a visit. His first "Lone Visit!" Tuesday night we went to the Mallards game in Madison (A BLAST, by the way). Alex chose to sit in the furthest front seats we could and after I left to go get some drinks, I came back and here everyone had drinks already. We had our own staff person, catering to our every whim and need! After the game, Dan got each of the kids a ball and they had the team sign. At the very end, there was a really fine young man who must have a soft spot for kids whose mom's embarrass them by making them take pictures with baseball players!!

Whew. What a nice boy! The next morning, we headed out for Lake Petenwell. A place that we wanted to get a permenant camping sight earlier in the year, but Uncle Sam did not allow it.

We had a great time, but only ended up staying one night. The lake was absolutely disgusting. It had layers of algae, bright green, that looked like it was toxic. We thought maybe we could boat to a better place on the lake, but no such luck. Despite that, we did have a fun time, and it was Alexs' first time truly camping.

Pudgy pies, cooking over the campfire, and 4 minute showers! Ahhh, nature at it's best. Well...other than the smell of dead fish and toxic lake!

I've edited this about 10 times now again, so I'm going to put my patience at rest by adding one other memorable event about our trip camping...

LOOK MOM! NO TRAINING WHEELS!!

(and that's the third try for that, so that's all for now!!)

June in August?!?

Not exactly in chronological order, but oh well. Above, Mal and Christian are on the carousel at the Town & Country Days in Lake Mills, it was the first year in many that Alex wasn't here with us. We all missed the Sheffermans, wasn't quite the same without them.

We were able to take some weeknights and Sunday nights to go for boat rides on Rock Lake. Christian has been posing with his imaginery friend. We don't really know his/her name, just usually shows up at camera time!
And then there's Mallory who had this habit of biting the skin around her fingers when she was nervous, anxious, or just bored.

On top of all of this, both of the kids attended summer school (well, Christian missed quite a bit, but he went when he could). Mallory took some fun classes and is still talking about dance class with Mrs. Stilling. She sure loves dancing.

One of many gorgeous sunsets on Rock Lake this summer.
We found out, as you may read on a "later" update that we are so blessed to live on such a clean lake. I've got some photos on our laptop that go next from July, so I'll leave that
for another day (soon, I hope).

What is one to say about June, the time of
perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and
with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever
fade. ~Gertrude Jekyll

Surprise!! An update!

It's as though I've got an audience to perform for here today!! It's as though there are people just waiting to see what is new in our lives over the past two months and I'm just not even sure how to start!! I guess I'll pick up where I left off and go from there-we'll see how far I get!

It's not what you think! On the left is Christian's mouth. The thing hanging down is that little "punching bag thing" in the back of our throats and to the right is one of his huge tonsils. The photo on the right is him mustering up a smile for me post-surgery. It was a tough day, but I have to say he was a trooper.

They had to wrap his entire arm so that he didn't know there was an iv in it.

After the surgery, Dr. Lindstrom told me that he did great and that his adenoids that they took out were quite large also. I waited a bit longer, then they called me back. He was a hurting unit when I first saw him, before the pain medication set in. The nurses had me get right onto bed with him and that was comforting for both of us. The hospital was the easy part. I would highly recommend Oconomowoc Hospital to anyone. They were wonderful from beginning to end, then sent a Thank You card to Christian with signatures from each of the nurses, with little notes from some of them.

Once we got home, he HATED his liquid Tylenol with Codeine and was quite a bear. Finally after not eating much, getting up every 4 hours and massive arguments over taking the yucky medicine, and losing some weight, (6 days), but fortunately no bleeding or any complications, we were able to give him Motrin. Much better...but it still took much longer than I had planned for him to get better. THEN...after getting pretty much everything he wanted for two weeks, we had to start all over teaching our strong-willed Christian exactly who was the parent and that the patient-phase was behind us! Not fun. So that's the much awaited surgery which happened on June 26, 2007 (it is still 2007, isn't it?).